Rethinking Palestinian Refugee Communities in Pre-War Syria and the Right of Return

Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2017 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2017 Rethinking Palestinian Refugee Communities in Pre-War Syria and the Right of Return Eliza Wincombe Cornwell Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2017 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Cornwell, Eliza Wincombe, "Rethinking Palestinian Refugee Communities in Pre-War Syria and the Right of Return" (2017). Senior Projects Spring 2017. 367. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2017/367 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Rethinking Palestinian Refugee Communities in Pre-War Syria and the Right of Return Senior Project Submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College by Eliza Cornwell Annandale-on-Hudson, New York May 2017 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Michelle Murray and Dina Ramadan for unending support and encouragement throughout my time at Bard. I would also like to thank Kevin Duong for helping me formulate my ideas, for inspiring me to write and re-write, and for continuously giving me a sense of purpose and accomplishment in completing this project. This project is dedicated to my grandparents. To my grandfather, HDS Greenway, whose wisdom and passion for the world made me fall in love with the Middle East. And to my grandmother, JB Greenway, for her never-ending love and support. "I love it [Yarmouk Camp] a lot. I love its details. I love living in it, I don't know why. I hope to never leave it, I hope to remain living in it, I hope that my circumstances become better and I remain living in it. If I could produce only one play per year, and to stage it in the camp only, I'd have no problem. I would be content and happy, and no one will get to know me, I don't want to become famous or become anything. I only want to remain living in this place, and to be able to work in theater and to remain an ordinary person, not more than ordinary. I don't want to live in anything other than an ordinary situation, in this situation I would be very happy. These are my hopes." -Interview with Hassan Hassan in 2008, who died under torture in a Syrian Jail in 2013. Travel Tickets On the day you kill me You’ll find in my pocket Travel Tickets To peace, To the fields and the rain, To people’s conscience. Don’t waste the tickets. Samih al-Qasim Translated from the Arabic by Abdullah al-Udhari Table of Contents Introduction …………………………………………………………..……………………...…..1 Chapter One ……...……………………………………………………..………...………...…...9 Arendt, Agamben and the Nation-State Chapter Two ……………………...……………………………………..………………...……25 Rethinking Citizenship and Recognition in Palestinian Refugee Communities in Syria and in Black American Communities in the United States Chapter Three ………………….……………………………………….……………………...50 Rights and Inclusion through Enacting Political Claims to a Utopian Citizenship: the Right to Claim a Right Conclusions …………………………………………...…………………...……………………72 Bibliography………………………………………………………………...………..…………80 1 Introduction Until the outbreak of Civil War in 2011, Palestinian refugees in Syria were integrated into Syrian culture, politics and economics. They had the right to public education, to own property, to hold public office, and to serve in the Syrian military.1 Before 2011, only one third of Palestinian refugees in Syria were living in camps. The rest were either in unofficial camps scattered around the country or had integrated fully into Syrian cities. The camps themselves eventually became indistinguishable from the cities around them; after sixty years they had turned into suburbs, without a tent in sight. Palestinians had “initial expectations of temporariness.”2 However, as time passed, families began to realize their stay was more than temporary. Abu Ahmad, who left what was then the Palestinian city of Safad in1948 and now has family in Syria, stated that, “when we first came we thought that we were staying for a week, ten days; a month; it was only later that we realized that the whole situation was messed up. We didn’t become refugees; we became beggars.”3 Palestinian refugees made up 2% of the population in Syria by 2011; they were therefore little economic or social burden on the state and were “institutionalized through laws and bureaucratic practices.”4 Critically, Palestinian exiles were encouraged to join political movements within the pre-existing Syrian framework for doing so. Anaheed Al-Hardan notes that Syrian unions as well as other tools of popular mobilization were open to Palestinian refugees from 1948.5 This resulted in Syrians and Palestinians becoming closely aligned and 1 Nell Gabiam, The Politics of Suffering: Syria's Palestinian Refugee Camps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 19. 2 Anaheed al-Hardan, Palestinians in Syria: Nakba Memories of Shattered Communities (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 63. 3 Anaheed al-Hardan, “The Right of Return in Syria: Building a Culture of Return, Mobilizing Memories for the Return,” Journal of Palestine Studies 41, no. 2 (Winter 2012): 63. 4 Al-Hardan, Palestinians in Syria, 66. 5 Al-Hardan, The Right of Return Movement in Syria,” 67. 2 quelled would-be Palestinian movements against the Syrian government. From 1948, Syria integrated refugees “while preserving their separate Palestinian identity.”6 While legally Palestinian, the vast majority of these refugees were born in Syria, their grandparents the last generation with real memories of “home.” Palestinians were encouraged to explore their identity as exiles and as Palestinians, most likely so that integration and assimilation could occur without Palestinians disappearing into Syrian society completely - thereby remaining a problem for Syria’s neighbor, Israel. Nell Gabiam writes that because of hostile relations with Israel, “the [Syrian] government has generally been welcoming and protective toward Palestinian refugees living on Syrian territory.”7 Abu Hosam, a second generation Palestinian refugee in Damascus wrote in 2005 that “we were warmly welcomed in Syria and we were treated well. Some kind Syrian people distributed food, clothing, money and so on. They were very kind.”8 He adds, “they don’t have racism and everyone knows that Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon are one country. Colonization separated them.”9 Palestinian refugees faced radically different situations in other host states. In 1948, Palestinian refugees in Jordan, in or outside of the camp, received full Jordanian citizenship; now, one in every three Jordanian nationals is of Palestinian descent.10 The case is unfortunately the opposite in Lebanon, where influxes of Palestinian refugees brought a huge increase of Sunni Muslims to the already fragile balance of religious minorities upon which Lebanon’s peace depended. Palestinians in Lebanon continue to be ostracized and stigmatized; considered 6Al-Hardan, "The Right of Return Movement in Syria,” 67. 7 Gabiam, The Politics of Suffering, 18. 8 Gabiam, The Politics of Suffering, 19. 9 Gabiam, The Politics of Suffering, 20. 10 Wadie E. Said, "Palestinian Refugees: Host Countries, Legal Status and the Right of Return," Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees 38 (2003): 90. 3 outcasts, they are denied almost all rights associated with citizenship.11 This is largely the case across the region Syria is therefore unique because until 2011 Palestinian refugees had enjoyed stability for six decades, and had “civil rights shared by no other disenfranchised Palestinian refugee community.”12 Although denied citizenship, Palestinian refugees in Syria enjoyed a great degree of socio-economic integration. Gabiam writes that “Syria generally did not see its refugees as a threat to Syrian employment or natural resources.”13 Only when Syria went through difficult economic periods were Palestinians recognized as immigrants, and they were almost unrecognizable as refugees until the beginning of the Syrian civil war.14 However, despite integration into Syrian society, Palestinian refugees formed strong attachments to their homeland. These refugees identified strongly as Palestinians, often protesting camp development and integration into Syrian society. By emphasizing the Palestinian aspects of their identity, Palestinian exiles made a conscious separation between their own struggle and Syrian political movements. Cultivation of Palestinian identity and memory centered around the “right of return,” a section of UN resolution 194, published on December 11, 1948. The resolution states that under international law, “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date.”15 Since 1948, this right of return has “guaranteed” by the UN, and has been demanded by almost all Palestinian refugee 11 Rex Brynen and Roula El-Rifai, The Palestinian Refugee Problem: The Search for a Resolution (London: Pluto Press, 2014), 50. 12 Al-Hardan, Palestinians in Syria, 62. 13 Gabiam, The Politics of Suffering, 21. 14 Gabiam, The Politics of Suffering, 21. 15 Helena Lindholm Schulz, The Palestinian Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2003), 140. 4 communities, including from internally displaced Palestinians in refugee camps throughout the West Bank. During the Oslo Peace Accords, the right of return seemed suddenly possible for the vast majority of Palestinians living within 100 miles of the Israeli border.16 However, in 1993 and again in 2000, it became clear that President Clinton would neither be able to solve the refugee problem nor realize Resolution 194 during his time in office.

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